|
Posts: 125
Location: So. California
Joined: March 22, 2005
|
I could go on about the BSG Qol, but I'll try and keep it short. I listen to virtually all music through it, with a few rare exceptions. To my ear, the invaluable benefit of the Qol is that it essentially removes the "recording" from the music. In other words, the perpetual problem with listening to music has always been that it doesn't sound live, and instead is clearly recognizable as a recording, when compared to it's live equivalent. Live is, after all, the true, so called "absolute sound". I know I sound like a salesman here, but that's what's clearly the case, IMO. The importance of this cannot be overestimated. --A problem with the Qol's bypass button feature, is that, once depressed, the volume drops back down to its normal level, forcing the listener to quickly try and bring up the volume to match the Qol's active level. This loss of a few seconds is actually crucial, in that it makes it hard to instantly compare. My preamp has a custom volume attenuation feature for a given line input, which enables me to feed the Qol's louder feed of a recording into one input, and the up attenuated matched volume of the completely bypassed music into another input. Believe me, this is the only way to go, when comparing Qol vs. normal, with a press of the remote control button. Larry Kay should have included a bypass WITH attenuation button on the Qol, as well as normal bypass without, IMO. --BTW, not just Robert Harley, but also John Atkinson and Richard Vandersteen regularly use, or have used/owned the Qol. I spent time in Richard Vandersteen's room talking with him about it at CES, back in January. He agreed with me about the problem with the Qol's bypass button, as designed. As for Underwood hifi selling the Qol for 1K, yes that's the case, as Walter Liederman bought out Larry Kay's remaining inventory. I spoke with him a few months ago at the Newport show. He may have sold out his remaining units by now. All I can say is, at this point, don't pay more than 1K for a BSG QOL, whether new or used, and if for some reason it doesn't work out for you, you can always resell. I don't think you'll be disappointed.
|
